Inca Culture and Five Star Cuisine in Lima

June 22, 2025

Greetings Friends, Family, and Fellow Travelers,

We thought we’d send out a brief(er) newsletter about our time in Lima before we venture to Cusco, where our kids will be participating in a two week hub sponsored by Deliberate Detours. I imagine they will have a lot to say about their experience meeting other kids and participating in various aspects of Peruvian life and culture.

Our plans for Lima could more or less be divided into two categories: cultural tourism and food. We stayed at a Hilton in Miraflores, which inexplicably allowed us to select four large entrees (each) for breakfast. This resulted in essentially never having to buy lunch or dinner for the kids for the duration of our stay thanks to the innovative concept of “lots of to go boxes.” Our first night in Lima, we visited the Republica del Pisco, which is known for its long, innovative list of pisco sours. We both ordered passion fruit coca and enjoyed them very much.

Cultural Tourism

Lima City Tour

Our guide, Sylvana, picked us up and we drove about a half hour to Lima’s historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There, we explored the beautiful Church of La Merced, as well as visited the Plaza de Armas. The big draw was a visit to the San Francisco Monastery, including the catacombs. We also stopped at some shops that sold alpaca products, including hats and stuffed animals. It was a great introduction to this vibrant city of more than ten million people!

Gamarra

We spent a morning visiting Gamarra, a vibrant textiles market. We wandered the crowded streets, stopping at a shop to make souvenir t-shirts for our family. Next, we visited the Witches Market, where we walked through stalls and stalls of medicinal plants, herbs, and grains. We learned about some of the black magic performed by local Shamans, though didn’t see or experience any of it. Once our guide, JJ, started explaining some of the practices, we all agreed it would have been too much for us.

The highlight for me was visiting with Alicia, who read our futures through coca leaves. All five of us took turns asking about health, school, work, and love. Some of my favorite commentary was that “we have many expenses but we will recuperate our money.” As someone taking a 14-month travel sabbatical from work, this was welcome information. Alicia also told Simon that he would have “muchas mujeres” (help!) and that Jonah would be more successful in school and in wealth than his brother. No one lorded this information over his brother’s head for the next hour. Meanwhile, Calla was told that she has a good heart but sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night with something bothering her. All in all, it was an interesting local experience in which to partake!

The coca plant and use of coca leaves remains a large part of the culture in numerous South American countries, and we’ve seen leaves for sale a several markets and also tried coca tea on a few occasions, particularly to help adjust to altitude. The leaves have a number of medicinal uses from helping with indigestion to being a natural anesthetic. It’s been cultivated since the time of the Incas who also used it in various rituals in addition to a medicine. Obviously, it has also become known as the source of addictive drugs, and for this reason coca leaves are illegal in many countries including the U.S. Don’t worry, we have no plans on attempting to smuggle anything home!

Shanty Town

This was probably the most unique experience from our time in Lima. Our guide, Cesar, met us at our hotel, and then we drove to a small village on the outskirts of the main city. First we stopped at the local market to try some fruits. We also sampled a drink made from quinoa and a delicious sweet bread called cachanga. Next, we visited a local village, specially to see their soup kitchen. There, a small handful of women rise at 5am daily to make meals for upwards of 100 people per day with a rotating menu. Food costs 3 sols/day, and the kitchen has limited government support. Over the pandemic, they were feeding close to 200 people per day. On the day we visited, none of the children were in school because city buses are on strike. As we understand it, drivers are striking because they are being extorted by local mafia (or whatever the Peruvian version of this is) and the police are not sufficiently intervening. We’d picked up small containers of (knock off) play dough to bring to the children while they were in school. Instead, we ended up handing them out to the kids we encountered on the street. We all felt very awkward about the whole thing, and shared this with Cesar. Essentially, we were hyper aware of being White American tourists coming into their neighborhood and bringing them gifts. (In fact, this is diametrically opposed to some of the advice you get when traveling to other countries, where tourists are explicitly requested not to give small gifts to the local children.) Cesar understood, but said that it isn’t like that, that this is an area that rarely sees tourists and they are glad to have us visit. I don’t know. It was what it was and - if little else - made for a lot of good discussion and reflection with our kids.

One thing we’d learned almost immediately after arriving in Peru was that just hours earlier there’d been a magnitude 6.4 earthquake. Just a few days later, the impact could be seen in the shanty town. Because these individuals live high on the hills, panoramic views of the city are breathtaking, but there are very real safety concerns during earthquakes. Some of our tour money goes to supporting the local communities, which we greatly appreciate. 

Following our Shanty Town tour, we headed to Barranco, Lima’s bohemian neighborhood, to poke around the crafts markets.

Food

Food Tour

After exploring Gamarra, we began our food tour. First, we stopped at a local restaurant to try ceviche, fish chowder, and a dish that tasted like a cross between Spanish paella and Chinese fried rice. Next up we headed to some other local neighborhoods, eventually ending in a local winery that also makes pisco. I only took a sip or two of the rose and Moscato because they were way too sweet, but Justin and I enjoyed both passion fruit-mango and tamarind pisco sours. In all honesty, this wasn’t the most exhilarating food tour on which we’d been, and probably wasn’t my wisest activity choice sandwiched between two outstanding tasting menus. All the food was good; we were just way too full to eat it.

So….. let’s talk Lima’s food scene. Lima is known for having a vibrant, eclectic restaurant scene, regularly landing multiple spots on the World’s 50 Best list. Before coming to Lima, I did a lot of research to figure out where we should go, and ultimately selected Central (#1 in the world, 2023) and Maido (#5 in the world, 2024). Both of these were definitely splurges, particularly this far into our journey around the globe. At the same time, it was our anniversary, and I knew I would regret missing out on the opportunity to dine at these stellar establishments.

We ate at Central on our second night in Lima. We arrived a few minutes early, so were seated outside and served a mint tea. While we waited, we chatted with another family and were asked whether we were on our honeymoon. After 16 years of marriage, it was nice to be told that we had a glow about us. It may have just been the night off, of course, but it was sweet to be mistaken for newlyweds.

The concept at Central is deceptively simple: 13 courses across multiple Peruvian ecosystems, categorized by altitude. The lowest altitude presented was course 5 “Warm Sea Current” (15 mbsl), whereas the highest was Extreme Altitude (4200 masl and my favorite course of the night). For almost every course, the server brought out a highlighted ingredient or two on a platter, and then presented several smaller individual dishes comprised of ingredients from a specific altitude. I was worried that the high concept dinner might be interesting, but perhaps not tasty, but this was not at all the case. Everything was spectacular, save for one element from one of the fish courses. One thing that was particularly fun was that so few of the dishes tasted as I’d expected them to. For example, one dish that looked like colorful foam actually had the consistency of butter and the taste of shrimp. After 10 courses, we were taken upstairs to visit the experimental chocolate lab, where we sampled pure cacao with nibs. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this; I typically don’t enjoy 100% cacao because it is too bitter. We returned to our table for the final three courses: all dessert. The final course was the most innovative, using every single part of the cacao plant. After dinner, we were presented with small chocolate bars to commemorate our evening.

The only downside of the night is that the sitter we’d hired – vetted and recommend by the hotel -- was a bit of a mess. Jonah emailed a couple of times during dinner to say that she wasn’t putting Calla to bed, and this was confirmed via text. Apparently, Calla was like “I want to watch more TV!” and she was all “cool beans.” When we got back to our room around 10:30pm, she’d just fallen asleep and the boys were wide awake, which made for a rough next morning. Not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things; the kids were fine, but the boys said that they weren’t comfortable with this particular sitter returning. Fortunately, the coordinator of the Cusco hub had a connection and hooked us up with a new sitter for our dinner at Maido (scheduled for two days after Central to give our stomachs a reprieve). With our kids speaking very minimal Spanish, it’s certainly a tall order to hire a sitter to watch them in two hotel rooms for the night!

Maido is a Nikkei restaurant, which is Japanese/Peruvian fusion. The standout here is their 14-course tasting menu. We began our meal with cocktails, which for me meant a deliciously smokey mezcal martini. Overall, the meal was tasty; I thought the standout dishes were “Sea and Pistachios” (like a Japanese spin on ceviche) and “Chorizo ice cream” which was so tasty that I may or may not have asked for another one. Unlike Central, the atmosphere of Maido was far less refined and much more bustling. Service was a bit uneven; the first course included the one ingredient I had told the waiter not five minutes earlier I couldn’t eat (mustard), and we had some difficultly communicating our wine order to the sommelier. It was hard not to compare our experience to the one we had at Central, though. Again, while a stellar meal, flavors felt less novel, and there were a handful of dishes that we just flat out did not enjoy. 

The day after we dined at Maido, World’s Best released their 2025 top list, and we were surprised to find Maido took the #1 slot. (Once a restaurant hits #1, it can no longer be on the list.) While we are glad we took the opportunity to dine there, it certainly was not nearly as solid an experience – either service-wise or food-wise – as Central.

On our final morning in Lima, Calla and I visited the Inka Market before heading back to the hotel to await our car for the airport.

Until next time…

xo,

Sara, Justin, Jonah, Simon, and Calla